How To Write Good Dialogue

                                                    

I'm a dialogue junkie. The first thing I look for when I read a novel is quotation marks.

 If I don't see any by page 2, I'm out of there. I like to be inside my characters in a scene and see, the way it looks and smells to them. You learn this by constantly describing people and scenes in your mind all day, wherever you go. When you meet someone with a characteristic you can use, describe them in your journal. When you write dialogue, you are the character, playing out the scene.

Most people use clichés when they speak, according to their culture. I live in the South, and one of my favorites is, “He’s a hard dog to keep under the porch.” “Back in the day” is used too much. I save it for people I don’t like. When teenagers are relating a conversation, they often start with, “He goes…” and then, “I go…” I like to give pet expressions to my characters. The sheriff’s wife in my book, Maddie’s Choice, is a loud, buxom woman who ends a lot of her sentences with “So to speak,” and has Maddie doing it sometimes.

 Since I write women’s lit with romance, I create, first, a female and a male main protagonist, and I’ll probably write in each one’s point of view, which means I have to know the character intimately before they speak—be in tune with the emotions governing their speech, as well as their background and culture. How do they feel at that moment? Okay, here’s a for instance from my romance, Maddie’s Choice, set present day, at an Arkansas cattle ranch.

Maddie Taylor is from New York, a successful writer of romances and has inherited half of the ranch.  She’s just driven in and is greeted by a very unfriendly crowd of cowboys. Clearly she’s not welcome. We’ve already met her in New York so we know how she’s looked forward to living on a ranch, yearning for real friends. Disappointed almost to tears at their attitude she loses her temper and explodes into a rant. Feisty Maddie has a smart mouth. Her speech will reflect her background as a successful writer, educated, with a large vocabulary at her command.  She’s just been told Uncle Gid said she’s some Bimbo who just wants to take the money and leave.

Fueled by anger, she planted her bright red boots solidly, put her fists on her hips, and raged, “Whoever implied that is a sexist, judgmental, bigoted ignoramus who doesn’t have a clue, and has no business giving opinions on subjects about which he knows nothing. Where might I find this paragon of Western wisdom so that I might enlighten him?”

“Right here, ma’am. You have somethin’ to say to me?”

The deep voice came from right behind her, full of challenge, loaded with sarcasm, and entirely too close. She turned and looked into the eyes of Mister Sex, himself.

“I’m here to stay. Now, deal with it.”

“Well, hell.”

This is Gideon, the other half-owner, who has decided not to like her, although she excites him. He’s street-smart and his speech reflects his gender. When he’s at a loss for words, he often says, “Well, hell.”

The following are snippets from a conversation Gid has with Pete, the grizzled senior citizen, foreman of the ranch for years and surrogate dad to young, orphaned Gideon. By now we know that Gideon is a damaged war veteran with PTSD and although yearning for love, is afraid to get close for fear he’ll hurt someone. In this scene, Gid is sitting alone in the barn, depressed after another argument with Maddie, nearly drunk from a bottle of wine. Pete enters.

“Gid, what are you doing here? I thought you were with Maddie?”

Gideon gestured with the bottle. “Here, it’s some wine I found I the kitchen.”

Pete accepted the offer and took a drink. “Jesus,” he gasped, coughing, “what is this stuff?”

“Chardonnay. Maddie bought it for the party. She says New Yorkers drink it.”

Pete grimaced. “It wouldn’t be my poison of choice. Hell, I don’t like grapes on a bunch, why would I like ‘em in a bottle? Guess it gets the job done, though.”

Gid got to the point. “I don’t know a damned thing about women.”

“Women are different ‘n men,” Pete agreed with a nod.

“Ain’t that the damned honest truth?”

Gideon goes on to explain his latest dust-up with Maddie, his confusion, and despair. Pete tells him his problem.  “Hell, boy. You’re already half in love with that woman.”

“I don’t believe in love. People don’t have it in them to give. This man-woman thing is all about sex. There’s no such thing as love. How would you know, anyway?” He raised the bottle to his lips “You’ve been married to Bea for more’n fifty years. Do you love Bea?” It took a lot of wine for him to find the nerve to ask that. A man his age shouldn’t be ignorant of such things.

Pete thought a bit. “In the morning I wake up, in this warm place that Bea and me made, with her curled up against me, holdin’ on to me like I was the most important thing in her world. No matter how my day goes, I know she’ll be there when I come home. The thought makes the day worth living. That’s how I know.”

I could have left the tags off all Pete’s speech because his words were so different from Gideon, but they serve to pace the scene, so I left some on. 

Don’t be afraid of making your men human. There is a film I watch every time it is on TV that does this to perfection. As Good As It Gets, with Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear. The men bare their souls to each other in a heartfelt way that makes them no less men. The realization that men speak differently when they are among their own was pioneered by Paddy Chayefsky, a brilliant playwright of the 1950’s and his breakthrough play Marty (1955). His style was termed “kitchen realism.”

In this book Gideon’s army buddy shows up with the DEA when Maddie is kidnapped, right before a gun battle with the local drug-smuggling motorcycle gang. Gideon’s army friend is Australian. That needed a lot of research into Australian slang. At the end of the last scene, after the gun battle, when Maddie’s life has been saved by an Angus bull, he remarks, “If the bikey comes good, he’ll need a new set of knackers. That bull made a mess of him.”

You can read a sample of Maddie's Choice at http://www.amazon.com/Maddies-Choice-Joyce-Zeller-ebook/dp/B00EW1LOP8/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449868219&sr=1-5&keywords=Books+by+Joyce+Zeller

Point of View--What is it and who cares?

I had enormous trouble with Point of View when I began writing. There is a rule in fiction writing that every word has to be in somebody’s point of view—in other words how the main character in that scene is experiencing the moment. My critique group despaired that I would ever “get it,” but the truth is, unless you write in POV, you’ll never get published. Editors won’t read your stuff. If your fame equals Nora Roberts or Tom Clancy you can write anyway you choose. For the rest of us, near the bottom of the food chain, if you don’t follow the rule, you’re spinning your wheels.

To complicate matters, there are many Points of View. Your only recourse is to know them all, and then you decide what to use. I’ve never read an explanation that made any sense, so, for the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try to explain them all in simple, understandable fashion, with some examples.

We’ll start with my favorite—the one you are never to use—which I use all the time. It’s called Omniscient, but I like to call it Authors, because it is you, the writer, invading the narrative with comment, or simply writing the scene with no one else in it with a point of view.

Example: “Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived dragon.” That is your voice, telling a story. I used Omniscient as a beginning for Christmas For Annabel. I wanted to clue my reader in that this was going to be a fairy tale with Christmas Magic and a happy ending, so I used it in the prologue. To Whit: “Imagine, if you will, on a cold frosty night, an all but deserted downtown city street. It is a few days before Christmas, and all is quiet.” It sets the scene for a modern love story.

I used it sparingly in Maddie’s Choice. A scene in the first chapters of the book has Gideon, my troubled male protagonist, and Maddie, my irrepressible female, having dinner with two ranch hands and Gideon’s two young nephews. They’ve been telling silly knock-knock jokes and laughing while Gideon sits glaring. He leaves the table to go to his office. I end the chapter with: “They spent the next half-hour cleaning up, talking companionably, and occasionally laughing, unaware that Gideon listened from his office down the hall, wishing he were part of it.” This is my reader’s first hint that here is a lonely man, needing love.

John Steinbeck, my favorite author, was a master of this, but he wrote when omniscient was allowed. In his novel, Sweet Thursday, Doc, a marine biologist, one of the loneliest persons you’ll ever meet and the main character, is conversing with a girl he picked up in a bar, trying to get her interested in octopi.  Steinbeck interjects: There’s no need for giving the girl a name. She never came back . . .” Wow. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about her and him?

If you still don’t get it, e-mail me at author@joycezeller.com and we’ll talk.

One last example from a novel that, as my agent, Jeanie Liaocono would say, is waiting to be published. To set the scene: the guys are playing poker in one of the motel rooms; the girls are having their own party down the hall that has gotten way too loud. A harried manager has summoned the guys to do something about it. “Lloyd’s concern for Penny sent him to the head of the group hurrying down the corridor. The noise from room 112 bounced off the walls. Like a posse of vigilantes, ready to storm the gates, the men advanced.

Booyah!”

The last word is author intrusion, and will probably be booted by my editor, but it was fun writing it.

Next week: Interior Monologue, the one you have to know before you get to Third Person, Single Point of View.

Mock Apple Pie and Desperation Cake

The day has finally arrived when my new western romance is on the press and due for release September 1. Though it has been a month since my last blog, and the world is full of harrowing events that deserve examination, the event calls for something lighter. Writing any novel takes the author on many journeys of research. Maddie called for more than most. One chapter involved an old fashioned  barbecue to celebrate Abe's sixteenth birthday. The entire town of Peachville pitched in, everybody bringing a food dish. I wanted to have old recipes that had been in families for years and that sent me browsing through my collection left over from the days I wrote a cooking column for a newspaper. I'll share a couple of them with you.
The first is Mock Apple Pie, a creation that is at least as old as 1940. It's an invention of the Ritz Cracker people.Though called "apple pie," it doesn't have any apples and was all the rage in the 40s--something like "Green Bean Casserole," which is a must at Thanksgiving. Start with a baked pie crust. Crumple 36 Ritz crackers into the crust. In a saucepan boil 2 cups sugar, 2 cups water, 2tsp. cream of tartar for 15 min. Add 2 tblsp. lemon juice, grated rind of 1 lemon, some butter and cinnamon. Cool. When cool, pour syrup over crackers.

Desperation Cake. The story is this was created by a cook on payday. The cupboard was bare and no money to shop, so this is a dessert made from almost nothing. Beat one egg and a half cup sugar. Add 1 cup flour mixed with 1 tsp. baking powder and 1/4 tsp. salt. Then add 1/4 cup milk, 3 tblsp. melted butter and 1 tsp. vanilla. Bake in a greased and floured  11" x 7" pan in preheated 350 degree oven 25 minutes. Serve with any syrup or crushed fruit.

Okay, one more. Chocolate Gravy.  This is one Maddie, who is from New York, never heard of, but is a Southern favorite, served with biscuits. She becomes acquainted with this along with sweet tea and Jalapeno Corn Bread. Melt 2 tablsp. shortening in skillet. Add 2 heaping tblsp. flour and heat until golden brown. In a mixing bowl combine 1 cup sugar, 4 tblsp. cocoa, 2 cups milk, 1 tsp. vanilla extract. Pour into skillet mixture and cook until thick. Serve over hot biscuits.
Go to my website to read more about Maddie's Choice.  http://joycezeller.com